On a sloping tract of ground in a slight hollow is a small lake of liquid mud, with patches of blue, red, or white, and in many places boiling and bubbling most furiously.

All around on the indurated clay are small wells and craters full of boiling mud.

These seem to be forming continually, a small hole appearing first, which emits jets of steam and boiling mud, which upon hardening, forms a little cone with a crater in the middle.

The ground for some distance is very unsafe, as it is evidently liquid at a small depth, and bends with pressure like thin ice.

At one of the smaller, marginal jets which I managed to approach, I held my hand to see if it was really as hot as it looked, when a little drop of mud that spurted on to my finger scalded like boiling water.
A short distance off, there was a flat bare surface of rock as smooth and hot as an oven floor, which was evidently an old mud-pool, dried up and hardened.